Midnight Burial | Small Town | Barcarole | House at the Village’s End

Midnight Burial

Saint David has gone mad.

Somewhere a grave is dug.

For the slovenly procession

the violin moans, weeps, sobs.

Slowly the snow is falling,

or dandelions keep raining down—

a lamp’s square light on the road,

perhaps dawn will never come.

Meandering through the dark

A choral society, in black,

alleyways taper off, stepping

into the moonlight replete.

Humming sacred Latin words,

the procession walks along.

On the crooked roof

sits a shepherd’s-crook-tailed cat.

Candlesticks overturned:

the monks’ hoods hover.

On the hilltops, people

drew their windows closed.

In the gorge sits a bird.

Silent, deep in tangled grove.

From between the shutters

someone rattles a violin bow.

He who is strong, this evening

shall no longer awaken.

The bird’s feather will shiver

with the brows of his dreams.

Small Town

The moon became a cobalt hatchet,

the sky a blue-slatted fence,

between them swung the town hall’s tower—

we strolled.

Below, the square was splinters of fine silver:

the Holy Trinity askew, its harrowed Baroque

angels—the tepid grass, blaring like the beating

of wings.

And I waited for the birds atop the linden trees

to commence their sharp shrieking,

to awaken, from its intoxicating dreams, the colossal

doll-city.

The bells tolled. Above, on the electrical wires,

immeasurable sparks were being sundered

with a complicit message, calling at midnight

somewhere.

And from the lake, across the lilac park,

through the beaten alleyways between the grates,

there came floating, like weightless clumps of earth, the frogs’

heartbeats.

My eardrums deceived me—only this, the path.

In the lock, a key clattered far away.

I walked there, I marched beside you

on stork’s legs.

Barcarole

The decade is slowly foundering now

desire drifts on a raft beneath the house

the towers are playing Monteverdi

a yellow moon spreads across the canal

the yellow moon trembling yellow blotch

single bell rope hanging within the tower

the raft incandescent like the inside of a lamp

a colossal lamp the continent

the continent is slowly sinking now

raft tower canal and Gulag

Petrograd three heart attacks a paper mill

yellow moon spreading through the psych ward

the yellow blotch the trembling yellow blotch

but life like the well’s edge in the canals

water city for water city given

while Akhmatova slowly looks down

House at the Village’s End

At half past four, they look up at the moon,

then they page through the Book.

At half past five the candle is used up—

it’s when the miracles come round.

At that time, they go from house to house,

So many of them unknown.

They are not wearing black hoods.

Outside the slant fog drizzles down.

No harp is playing, no violin,

they bring no frozen prophecy.

But the one who understands them best

has lurked around cemeteries.

In the harmonic theory

of stones they reside,

after five nights’ passing renewed:

the moon-halo of the dead.

All who yet live there converge,

on the parchment, entangled.

Pale tallow women dancers hang

on the silver candelabrum.

“Éjféli temetés” and “Kisváros” from Útérintő. Összegyűjtött versek. Budapest: Argumentum, 2006. “Barcarola” from A barbarság éveiből. Huszonöt régebbi és huszonöt újabb vers 1988 – 1997. Budapest: A Magyar Írószövetség és a Belvárosi Könyvkiadó kiadása, 1998. “Faluvégi ház” in Élet és irodalom (es.hu). Budapest: Vol. XLVIII, No. 21, 2004. May 21, 2004.

Image by Antonio Carrau.